richb@sunaus.oz (Rich Burridge) (04/21/91)
This is announcement about the fourth general release of a "faces" server
for monitoring a list visually. Typically this is a list of incoming mail
messages, jobs in the print queue or users on a system.
Faces has five different modes of operation:
(a) The default will monitor for new mail. By default, only the last ten
messages are displayed. Using the left mouse button it is possible to
toggle the text in the faces window. This will either be the username
or the time the mail message arrived. The icon shows the image of the
last message to arrive.
(b) You can monitor the whole of a mail file. The open window will
automatically adjust it's size to correctly show the face icons. The
open window options are the username or the timestamp and number of
message from that user. The icon will display the image of the last
message, and a count of the total number of messages in the spool
file or mail folder.
(c) Monitoring a given print queue. This will generate a single face icon
showing the job at the top of the print queue, and the text message
will display the printer name plus the number of jobs to be printed.
Opening the window will show images of all the jobs in the queue. The
text on each image can be toggled, choices being the owners' name and
the size of the job in bytes.
(d) Monitoring users on a machine. For each user, a face image is displayed.
Text can be either the username or the time they logged on. The iconic
form displays the total number of users.
(e) Custom monitoring. You can specify a program or shell script to run.
The standard output from this program will be read by the faces program,
and the appropriate faces displayed using the information provided. The
format of this face information is given in the faces manual page.
Included with this release, is the ability to include a face image with
your mail message using an X-Face header line (plus continuation lines).
Faces expects this line to be in a certain compressed format, and
uncompresses it, and displays that image on-the-fly. There is also an
option to automatically update the faces database with this new image.
Audio capabilities are also provided as a conditional compilation option.
By default, after every sixty seconds, faces will recheck the mail file or
the print queue. If the mail spool file has changed size, it will produce a
chain of records for which it has face icons.
This release contains graphical interfaces for NeWS, SunView, X11 and XView.
Faces is based on the AT&T v8 face server called vismon, but is not derived
from vismon sources.
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The latest version of faces is v1.5.1 (v1.5 at patchlevel #1).
Faces is available from a variety of places:
* Via anon ftp from iuvax.cs.indiana.edu. It's a compressed tar file called
faces.tar.Z in the pub/faces directory. There are also three faces
databases there that can be used in conjunction with the faces program.
see the README file in that directory for more details.
* For Australian sites without anon ftp capabilities, faces.tar.Z is
available via fetchfile from sunaus.sun.oz
* And finally, it's available via the automatic mail archive server.
Requests should be sent to rb-archive-server@Aus.Sun.COM
If you want the complete fully patched version of faces v1.5.1, then you
should send fifteen messages containing the lines:
send faces partn
where n = 1-15. You can do this is one message, but the archive server
processes smaller messages faster. UUCP sites out there might like to
include a path line with each message, something like:
path uunet.uu.net!hostname!user
note that this is uunet.uu.net and not just uunet. Sun.COM doesn't
recognise uunet. This is the return path the archive server will use to
send your requests to. Also UUCP sites should note that you probably have a
size limit on each message. Yet another good reason to divide these into
multiple requests.
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A few other points...
* You may send copies of your local database and/or any logo bitmaps you
may have to Steve Kinzler (kinzler@cs.indiana.edu) for inclusion in the
facedir or logos databases. Logo bitmaps of any size or format are welcome.
* There is a mailing list for people interested in faces. It is:
faces@Aus.Sun.COM
To get added to the list, send a request to:
faces-request@Aus.Sun.COM
Early patches are sent to the mailing list, plus active discussion on
ideas for enhancements to faces.
* I'm now going overseas for seven weeks. Faces should be stable, and
easily portable to most common UNIX boxes. Further "official"
development will continue when I return in June. Requests to be added
to the mailing list will be handled during the next three weeks; after
that, they will be processed when I return.
* Suggestions for further improvement would be most welcome, plus bug
reports and comments.
Rich Burridge, DOMAIN: richb@Aus.Sun.COM
PHONE: +61 2 413 2666 ACSnet: richb@sunaus.sun.oz